“I’VE supported Villa for 55 years from First Division to Third Division and back up again. I’ve seen some good performances and some dire ones too. The same goes for board members and managers.

“Once those 11 Villa players are on the pitch I am behind them 100 per cent. If McLeish is appointed manager then my support for the Villa will remain. It’s called unconditional love.”

Now here’s a confession. I deliberately selected that comment from a Birmingham Mail online reader called ‘Kelyn’. I could have chosen any of hundreds of messages from internet fans’ forums, radio phone-ins or the letters pages of this very newspaper from an astonishing week in Second City football.

Supporters have voiced their objections to Big Eck more crudely than the graffiti daubed on the entrance at Bodymoor Heath and as politely as the ‘McLeish not welcome’ banner hung at the Holte End on Monday.

On Wednesday evening, just as Alex McLeish was shaking hands with his new bosses on his new job, an estimated 500 or so passionate supporters made their feelings known with a Villa Park protest which, thankfully, remained the right side of rowdy.

But I’ve selected Kelyn’s comment from the Mail online because I believe it most succinctly sums up the situation the Villa Park faithful now find themselves in.

McLeish is Villa’s new manager and supporters must decide whether their love for their club is greater than their loathing of the former Birmingham City boss.

Forget ‘Ginger this’ or ‘Bluenose that’, it is the colours McLeish displays on his tracksuit and club tie from now on which matter most.

Rightly or wrongly, and only time will tell, Randy Lerner and Paul Faulkner have taken arguably the club’s boldest-ever gamble in turning to the 52-year-old Scot. It is a choice which doesn’t so much as end their honeymoon period as get them holidaying in a potential war zone.

But the fact of the matter is, they’ve made their decision.

They’ve decided McLeish’s discipline, organisation, character and prudence are worth the considerable fall-out from his St Andrew’s stigma, relegation woes and cautious football.

If the Villa board’s decision to offer him the job is courageous, then the Glaswegian’s decision to accept it puts the ‘brave’ into Braveheart.

Knowing the potential gauntlet of hate he is about to run in his adopted home city surely shows just how much McLeish wants to be at AVFC.

Make no mistake, the honour of managing this football club has proved too exciting a challenge for him to resist.

True, doubling his salary and kick-starting a career which seemed like stalling following his recent frustrations at St Andrew’s will be among his motivations.

But would a millionaire manager really leave himself open to the vitriolic abuse he can expect from some spectators at his new club if he didn’t truly believe he could make a success of succeeding Gerard Houllier?

There have been threats from fans to boycott Villa. If they prefer Saturday afternoons shopping at the Bullring to cheering on their beloved club then that is their prerogative (although at the time of writing not a single season ticket had been returned).

However, if McLeish can risk the wrath of both halves of the Brum divide to get to Villa Park then can’t the Holte Enders, Trinity Roaders, Witton Laners and North Standers put their own difficulties with the appointment to one side to prove their undying commitment to the claret-and-blue cause?

After all, no one person is more important than the football club.

There will be a small minority of ‘fans’, and I use that term loosely, who will want McLeish’s Villa to fail miserably during their first half-a-dozen games so they can hound him out quickly. It seems a self-defeating stance to me.

The claret and blue brigade can be a force to be reckoned with. When Villa Park is rocking it is still a match for most stadiums in Europe in terms of atmosphere.

With that fanbase behind him, McLeish has got a chance. With it against him he hasn’t got a prayer.

If the early antagonism to Eck’s controversial appointment continues (and I fully appreciate there is no overnight cure for the anger and disappointment a significant section of supporters feel), Villa will face stronger opposition from within their own ‘family’ than they will from any rival team.

It’s an Eck of a leap of faith for Villa fans to make, I know, but maybe it’s time for them to follow Kelyn’s lead and show their football club some unconditional love.